28 Sep 15 | About Index, Art and the Law Commentary, Artistic Freedom Commentary and Reports, Campaigns, Statements
Index condemns a decision to remove an artwork by the artist Mimsy showing Sylvanian Families toys being terrorised by Isis.
According to reports, Isis Threaten Sylvania, a series of seven satirical light box tableaux, was removed from the Passion for Freedom exhibition at the Mall galleries after police raised concerns about the “potentially inflammatory content” of the work.
The removal highlights a worrying trend in which artistic or other work that addresses extremism has been shut down. Over the summer, the National Youth Theatre pulled a planned production of Homegrown, a play that examined Isis recruitment of young Britons just weeks before its scheduled start. Last week, Maryam Namazie, an Iranian-born campaigner against religious laws, was blocked from visiting Warwick University after the student union said she violated its external speaker policy. That decision has since been overturned.
“Concerns over terror are being inflated to such an extent that perfectly legitimate, non-criminal expression, is being shut down across Britain: from university campuses, to theatre stages, to art galleries,” said Index on Censorship CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “The upcoming extremism bill could worsen the situation further. In the case of the Sylvanian Families exhibit, we need to do more to ensure that police work with venues to promote freedom of expression, not stifle it.”
Index has produced a series of booklets on the UK’s legal framework and its impact on artistic freedom of expression for artists and arts organisations mounting challenging and controversial works.
25 Sep 15 | Bahrain Statements, Campaigns, mobile, Statements
The Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy, alongside 16 NGOs including Index on Censorship, today voiced support for the UN joint-statement on human rights in Bahrain. The statement, delivered by Switzerland at the 30th session of the UN Human Rights Council, was co-signed by 33 countries, including 19 EU states and the United States of America.
The statement remains open for additional signatories until the end of the Human Rights Council session on 2 October 2015. The NGOs invite states who have not signed to do so and call on those who have to continue exerting collective pressure for human rights progress in Bahrain.
Letter
To the Governments of: Albania, Argentina, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Malta, Mexico, Republic of Korea, Serbia, Slovak Republic, and Spain
24 September 2015
Excellencies,
We, the undersigned non-governmental organisations, write to voice our support for the joint statement on the human rights situation in Bahrain delivered by Switzerland at the 30th Session of the Human Rights Council (HRC).
Since the last joint statement on Bahrain in June 2014, the government has continued to curtail the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly. Human rights defenders, political opposition leaders, members of the media, and youth have faced intimidation, arrest, arbitrary detention, unfair trials and acts of reprisal by the authorities. Furthermore, negotiations of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ (OHCHR) for a programme of technical capacity building in Bahrain have stalled in the period since the June 2014 joint statement.
We urge your government, therefore, to sign the joint statement on Bahrain delivered by Switzerland at the HRC’s 30th session in order to refocus international attention on human rights in Bahrain and encourage the government of Bahrain to constructively address its ongoing violations.
International pressure on Bahrain continues to assist in addressing human rights violations in Bahrain, as reflected by the decision of the King of Bahrain to release prominent human rights defender Nabeel Rajab under a royal pardon after he spent over four months in prison for a tweet criticising the government.
It is critical, therefore, to take action now to reaffirm the high level of international concern over human rights conditions in Bahrain. To abandon collective pressure on Bahrain at a time when the situation is continuing to deteriorate would send an entirely wrong message to the Bahraini government, and undermine both internal and external efforts to foster genuine reform.
Switzerland has indicated that this joint statement will be open for additional signatories throughout the session. We therefore call on your government to recommit to supporting human rights in Bahrain, and to add your endorsement to this joint statement.
Sincerely,
Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB)
Amnesty International
ARTICLE 19
Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (BCHR)
Bahrain Institute of Rights and Democracy (BIRD)
Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS)
CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation
English Pen
European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR)
European Centre for Democracy and Human Rights (ECDHR)
Human Rights Watch
Index on Censorship
International Service for Human Rights (ISHR)
Pen International
Rafto Foundation
The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)
World Organization Against Torture (OMCT)
24 Sep 15 | mobile, News and features, United Kingdom
Photograph: Marcos Mesa Sam Wordley
The shock general election result in May gave David Cameron licence to lay out his vision for Britain in the first Conservative Queen’s Speech for almost 20 years. Gone were the concessions to the Liberal Democrats of five years previous, and instead the key planks of the Conservative manifesto were there in full. Expected measures to cut the deficit, reform welfare and introduce an in/out EU referendum were all announced. But, according to many, another common thread ran through the new government’s legislative programme: an assault on free speech.
“We’re deeply concerned that the government says one thing – that it believes freedom of expression is a fundamental British value – but in practice doesn’t believe that and is introducing legislation that could have quite a severe impact on freedom of expression,” says Jodie Ginsberg, chief executive of Index on Censorship, which campaigns against attacks on free speech across the globe.
Critics of the Conservatives’ record on civil liberties point to the resurrection of plans that were sidelined during the last Parliament, largely because of Lib Dem intervention. Privacy activists are alarmed that the new Investigatory Powers Bill may represent the revival of the so-called snoopers charter, allowing the security services access to everyone’s online and social media records. Plans to abolish the Human Rights Act and replace it with a British Bill of Rights have been delayed.
But proposals that have free speech campaigners up in arms are being introduced over the coming months. The Extremism Bill will introduce new banning and extremism disruption orders, giving the home secretary and other agencies the power to intervene against suspected extremist groups, and strengthen Ofcom’s role in tackling broadcasters who transmit extremist content.
Introducing it in May, the Prime Minister said: “For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone.”
The bill is part of the government’s five-year counter-extremism strategy to combat Islamist extremism and the increasing number of Britons travelling abroad to fight for Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (Isis). A key component of this strategy will be challenging those who promote “non-violent extremism”, said David Cameron in a wide-ranging July speech.
He said: “This means confronting groups and organisations that may not advocate violence – but which do promote other parts of the extremist narrative.
“We’ve got to show that if you say ‘yes, I condemn terror, but the kuffar are inferior’, or ‘violence in London isn’t justified, but suicide bombs in Israel are a different matter’ then you too are part of the problem.” He added that simply condemning Isis atrocities was insufficient, and that “we must demand that people also condemn the wild conspiracy theories, the anti-Semitism, and the sectarianism too”.
A lack of clarity on how the government will define what constitutes non-violent extremism has caused alarm among many in the Muslim community. Dr Shuja Shafi, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said there was concern that the strategy would “set new litmus tests which may brand us all as extremists, even though we uphold and celebrate the rule of law, democracy and rights for all”.
“The Prime Minister hasn’t given concrete proposals. The home secretary was asked to define extremism and she wasn’t able to do that,” says Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, a Muslim welfare organisation.
Shafiq questioned which views would be considered beyond the pale. “If, for example, you say you believe in sharia law the Prime Minister is suggesting that will make you an extremist and you could potentially face infringement of your civil liberties by expressing those views. It could be a Muslim who says he opposes gay marriage. Does that make him a bigot? I think it’s a really dangerous erosion of civil liberties.
“My approach is very simple – if you believe in freedom of speech as I do, then the likes of Anjem Choudary, Tommy Robinson and other far-right leaders have the right to express their views, and equally we have the right to challenge, debate and expose them.
“But you don’t defeat extremism by taking away an individual’s ability to put their view across.”
In the speech, Cameron said the ideology that underpins Islamist extremism must be countered by “British values”, such as democracy and the rule of law.
But Ginsberg agrees that having such broad definitions of “acceptable” speech means that it is impossible to know what could be deemed extremist. “[Cameron] has talked very vaguely about British values but does that mean that anyone who questions the current voting system, for example, or the current political set up is being un-British? Or says that they favour anarchy even if they’re not actively advocating violence. Is that unacceptable?
“What’s fundamental about democracy is that you should be able to ask questions and to express views that sometimes will conflict with the prevailing political thinking.”
Other upcoming legislation is also causing alarm to free speech campaigners. The Trade Union Bill has been described as the most radical package of union reforms since the 1980s and dramatically alters how industrial action is called for and carried out. The bill would introduce a turnout threshold of 50 per cent on strike ballots, a 14-day notice period on strikes, allows employers to bring in agency workers to replace striking staff and outlines new regulations on picketing to prevent “intimidation” of non-strikers. It has been bitterly opposed by unions and the Labour Party.
But one small line in an accompanying consultation document to the bill has drawn particular gasps of astonishment. It proposes that unions must inform employers and police 14 days ahead of strike action of any online or social media activity it plans to adopt and whether a loudspeaker or banners will be used on the picket line. Failure to comply could result in an enforcement order being served or a fine. “It would mean there are enormous levels of employer and political scrutiny of trade union protests, beyond what we think is the norm among modern democracies in the developed world.
The worry is that the package of measures in the bill taken together substantially undermine the basic democratic right to strike,” says Nicola Smith, head of economic and social affairs at the TUC.
Although ministers say that restrictions would not apply to individuals, labour groups say that employees who already have little legal protection will feel intimidated and less likely to publicly support strike action. Many also believe it would be unworkable.
“It will be impossible to police. Who can control Facebook or Twitter? Who will monitor that?” says Carolyn Jones, director of the Institute of Employment Rights, a labour movement thinktank. “If one stray person – who may not be in the union – if they send something out, does that mean the strike is then illegal? And then the union has got to run the very expensive, very-time consuming ballots because this is seen to be illegitimate.
“The threat is there – it’s intimidation. What happened to freedom of association? There are so many bits of international law that it would threaten to break. It’s madness – is it proportionate to the problem? No.”
Union concerns are shared by free speech campaigners. “It’s an attack on freedom of expression, it’s a potential attack on freedom of assembly… The idea that you might have to seek permission from government or that government might be vetting the kinds of people who can and can’t say things is extremely worrying,” says Ginsberg.
But the government defended the bill as a whole. A Department for Business, Innovation & Skills spokesperson says: “People have the right to know that the services on which they and their families rely will not be disrupted at short notice by strikes supported by a small proportion of union members.
“The ability to strike is important but it is only fair that there should be a balance between the interests of union members and the needs of people who depend on their services.”
Index on Censorship is to launch a campaign against the Extremism Bill, and unions are resisting the changes to strike laws. But campaigners are gloomy about the prospect of the government changing tack over the long-term and abandoning policies they believe infringe on free speech. “This has been the direction of travel for a long time,” says Ginsberg, particularly in relation to national security. “The problem is that there is only one direction that it’s going in and that’s to restrict further free expression. We’re not seeing any move back or any relaxation of the foot on the pedal.”
This article originally appeared on 23 September 2015 at Big Issue North.
24 Sep 15 | mobile, News and features, United Kingdom
I have been away, with thankfully intermittent internet access limiting my access to top quality prime minister/pig-related punning, so apologies if you see your fantastic pun replicated here. Entirely unintentional.
If you’ve been even more away than me, a quick recap of the story that will never die: Conservative peer Lord Ashscroft, he of the polls, has brought out a book — along with the Sunday Times’ Isabel Oakeshott — about Prime Minister David Cameron. Among the accusations levelled at Cameron are that Conservative colleagues see Libya as “his Iraq”, that he attempted to get a friend off criminal charges and that he listened to Supertramp.
No one cares about any of that stuff at all. The one thing everyone is, frankly, still cracking up about was the revelation in Monday’s Daily Mail (which is serialising the book) that Cameron, while at university, took part in an initiation ceremony for a drinking club which involved putting the parts of a prime minister we shouldn’t think about in a pig’s head. The head, it should be noted, was not attached to a live animal.
This is obviously enormously odd, and hilarious. I’m not about to get po-faced about sexual deviance, or how Cameron is screwing the country even more than he did that pig head, or, as I have seen, ponder the dark occult symbolism of our elite universities. Because, really, it’s not symbolic of anything apart from students being utter, utter clowns.
That is, of course, assuming that it is true. Something that is by no means certain. The source for the allegation is apparently an Oxford contemporary of Cameron’s who is now an MP, who reckons he has seen a photograph of a compromised future prime minister engaging with the hog’s head.
Now, “a bloke I know reckons he saw a photo” may be a decent threshold of proof for a pub anecdote (bonus points if the bloke is upgraded from mere bloke to “my brother’s friend” lending a real tangibility): but this is not presented as a pub anecdote, and as a presentation of proof, it doesn’t really do: it would never stand up in court, as the pig said to the aspiring Piers Gaveston member.
Given that, should David Cameron sue? Tricky business. Fine things that our new libel laws now are, does one really want a court case hinging on whether or not one performed indecencies on swine flesh a lifetime ago? Even if you win, do you want to go down in history as the Prime Minister who definitely didn’t have sex with a dead pig? One may as well buy a t-shirt with “not a wrong ‘un, honest” written on it.
In an interesting Guardian article, Damian McBride, a former spin doctor for Cameron’s predecessor Gordon Brown, wonders why Cameron’s people have not issued an official dismissal of “Piggate”, or any of the other allegation in the Ashcroft/Oakeshott book, pointing out that “In the absence of an instant bucket of water, the story has caught fire over the past two days. Not only that, it’s allowed other newspapers to declare open season on Cameron’s private life, as we see from today’s ‘coke parties’ splash in the Sun.”
I can understand McBride’s point, but I do think that Cameron’s people did the right thing here, mostly because if they start engaging with the specific allegations in the book, sooner or later they come round to having to confirm or deny the porcine partnering. We’re back to square one.
Where’s the free speech rub in this, I hear you ask? Well, there’s the simple fact that you have to be able to take as well as give in these matters. During Jeremy Corbyn’s ascendance to power as Labour leader, many of his followers complained daily of the outrageous “smears” of the dread MSM. In his leadership acceptance speech, Corbyn himself complained of the “most appalling levels of abuse from some of our media over the past three months” apparently suffered by him and his family during his campaign, which seemed to amount to some reheated speculation about the cause for a split from a previous partner and the shocking, shocking revelation that he ate baked beans out of a tin. Before you write in, questioning Corbyn’s public declarations and political associations is a necessary and important function of the press. People who complained about Corbyn’s apparent abuse now seem totally OK repeating allegations made by a wealthy Conservative peer in the pages of the Daily Mail. Which is fine, but just be aware of the mismatch. (To his credit, Corbyn appears to have entirely avoided the topic, though Cameron was lucky that there was no PMQs this week due to conference season).
Public figures will be open to scorn, ridicule, abuse and more. Their every move, from even before they aspired to power, will be pored over for clues and significance (as has been done by, for example, the New Statesman’s Laurie Penny with Cameron’s curious incident avec le cochon). It may happen, as we grow into an age where no one is embarrassable anymore, because they’ve already put everything on Instagram, that these stories will no longer make any sense. But for now they still happen, and on balance, it is good that they do.
When it comes to public figures, we should err away from caution. The extremely wealthy Ashcroft’s intervention with this string of what the KGB used to call Kompromat against Cameron is not perhaps the best example of the old speak-truth-to-power schtick (it’s more power calling other power names because it didn’t get what it wanted — a cabinet post, allegedly), but nonetheless, being rude about powerful people is very important and even cathartic — ask any cartoonist.
The rush of schweinficker jokes may have done little more than lifted the autumn gloom, but it’s strangely satisfying that in a democracy we can openly mock our leaders, safe in the knowledge that whatever they do, they’ll only make it worse for themselves.
23 Sep 15 | Magazine, Volume 43.04 Winter 2014
In conjunction with the Cambridge Festival of Ideas 2015, we will be publishing a series of articles that complement many of the upcoming debates and discussions. We are offering these articles from Index on Censorship magazine for free (normally they are held within our paid-for archive) as part of our partnership with the festival. Below is an article by Max Wind-Cowie on free speech in politics, taken from the winter 2014 issue. It’s a great starting point for those who plan to attend the Elections – live! session at the festival this year.
Index on Censorship is a global quarterly magazine with reporters and contributing editors around the world. Founded in 1972, it promotes and defends the right to freedom of expression.
We are often, rightly, concerned about our politicians censoring us. The power of the state, combined with the obvious temptation to quiet criticism, is a constant threat to our freedom to speak. It’s important we watch our rulers closely and are alert to their machinations when it comes to our right to ridicule, attack and examine them. But here in the West, where, with the best will in the world, our politicians are somewhat lacking in the iron rod of tyranny most of the time, I’m beginning to wonder whether we may not have turned the tables on our politicians to the detriment of public discourse.
Let me give you an example. In the UK, once a year the major political parties pack up sticks and spend a week each in a corner of parochial England, or sometimes Scotland. The party conferences bring activists, ministers, lobbyists and journalists together for discussion and debate, or at least, that’s the idea. Inevitably these weird gatherings of Westminster insiders and the party faithful have become more sterilised over the years; the speeches are vetted, the members themselves are discouraged from attending, the husbandly patting of the wife’s stomach after the leader’s speech is expertly choreographed. But this year, all pretence that these events were a chance for the free expression of ideas and opinions was dropped.
Lord Freud, a charming and thoughtful – if politically naïve – Conservative minister in the UK, was caught committing an appalling crime. Asked a question of theoretical policy by an audience member at a fringe meeting, Freud gave an answer. “Yes,” he said, he could understand why enforcing the minimum wage might mean accidentally forcing those with physical and learning difficulties out of the work place. What Freud didn’t know was that he was being covertly recorded. Nor that his words would then be released at the moment of most critical, political damage to him and his party. Or, finally, that his attempt to answer the question put to him would result in the kind of social media outrage that is usually reserved for mass murderers and foreign dictators.
Why? He wasn’t announcing government policy. He was thinking aloud, throwing ideas around in a forum where political and philosophical debate are the name of the game, not drafting legislation. What’s more, the kind of policy upon which he was musing is the kind of policy that just a few short years before disability charities were punting themselves. So why the fuss?
It’s not solely an issue for British politics. Consider the case of Donald Rumsfeld. Now, there’s plenty about which to potentially disagree with the former US secretary of state for defense – from the principles of a just war to the logistics of fighting a successful conflict – but what is he most famous for? Talking about America’s ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, he thought aloud, saying “because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” The response? Derision, accompanied by the sense that in speaking thus Rumsfeld was somehow demonstrating the innate ignorance and stupidity of the administration he served. Never mind that, to me at least, his taxonomy of doubt makes perfect sense – the point is this: when a politician speaks in anything other than the smooth, scripted pap of the media relations machine they are wont to be crucified on a cross of either outrage, mockery or both. Why? Because we don’t allow our politicians to muse any longer. We expect them to present us with well-polished packages of pre-spun, offence-free, fully-formed answers packed with the kind of delusional certainty we now demand of our rulers. Any deviation – be it a “U-turn”, an “I don’t know” or a “maybe” – is punished mercilessly by the media mob and the social media censors that now drive 24-hour news coverage.
Let me be clear about what I don’t mean. I am not upset about “political correctness” – or manners, as those of us with any would call it – and I am not angry that people object to ideas and policies with which they disagree. I am worried that as we close down the avenues for discussion, debate and indeed for dissent if we box our politicians in whenever they try to consider options in public – not by arguing but by howling with outrage and demanding their head – then we will exacerbate two worrying trends in our politics.
First, the consensus will be arrived at in safe spaces, behind closed doors. Politicians will speak only to other politicians until they are certain of themselves and of their “line- to-take”. They will present themselves ever more blandly and ever less honestly to the public and the notion that our ruling class is homogenous, boring and cowardly will grow still further.
Which leads us to a second, interrelated consequence – the rise of the taboo-breaker. Men – and it is, for the most part, men – such as Nigel Farage and Russell Brand in the UK, Beppe Grillo in Italy, Jon Gnarr in Iceland, storm to power on their supposed daringness. They say what other politicians will not say and the relief that they supply to that portion of the population who find the tedium of our politics both unbearable and offensive is palpable. It is only a veneer of radicalism, of course – built often from a hodge-podge of fringe beliefs and personal vanity – but the willingness to break the rules captures the imagination and renders scrutiny impotent. Where there are no ideas to be debated the clown is the most interesting man in the room.
They say we get the politicians we deserve. And when it comes to the twin plaques of modern politics you can see what they mean. On the one hand we sit, fingers hovering over keyboards, ready to express our disgust at the latest “gaffe” from a minister trying to think things through. On the other we complain about how boring, monotonous and uninspiring they all are, so vote for a populist to “make a point”. Who is to blame? We are. It is time to self-censor, to show some self-restraint, and to stop censoring our politicians into oblivion.
© Max Wind-Cowie and Index on Censorship
Join us on 25 October at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas 2015 for Question Everything an unconventional, unwieldy and disruptive day of talks, art and ideas, featuring a broad range of speakers drawn from popular culture, the arts and academia. Moderated by Index on Censorship CEO Jodie Ginsberg.
This article is part of the winter 2014 issue of the global quarterly Index on Censorship magazine. Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
23 Sep 15 | Magazine, Volume 37.03 Autumn 2008
In conjunction with the Cambridge Festival of Ideas 2015, we will be publishing a series of articles that complement many of the upcoming debates and discussions. We are offering these articles from Index on Censorship magazine for free (normally they are held within our paid-for archive) as part of our partnership with the festival. Below is an article by author Conor Gearty, on politics and extremism, taken from the summer 2008 magazine. It’s a great starting point for those who plan to attend the Can writers and artists ever be terrorists? session at the festival this year.
Index on Censorship is a global quarterly magazine with reporters and contributing editors around the world. Founded in 1972, it promotes and defends the right to freedom of expression.
I object to the ‘age of terror’ title. My anxiety about this is that it is already putting people like me at a disadvantage. I am forced to work within an assumption, which is shared by all normal, sensible people, that we live in ‘an age of terror’. Therefore the point of view that I am about to put – about the total appropriateness of the criminal law; about the relative security in which we live; about the fact of our being pretty secure in comparison with many previous generations – is deemed to be sort of eccentric, if not obstructive. This language has made impossible my victory in the competition for common sense. So I concede we live in a certain age, with misgivings, but I want to call it an age of counter terror. We live in an age during which it has suited certain elements within the culture to talk up, and reflect in law, a concern with a type of criminal violence that warrants legal form in the shape of counter-terrorism laws.
If you are still concerned about the ‘age of terror’, have a look at the FBI’s compendious analysis of terrorism 2000 to 2005 in the United States. You will find references to the occasional environmental activist who has attacked a tractor; you will find detailed analysis of the very occasional intrusion into animal experiment laboratories by this or that criminal tendency committed to the safeguarding of animals; you will find, in other words, a tremendous amount of space devoted to very little. You will find an organisation that is trying to supply an empirical basis for something without very much conviction. That’s why, frankly, the minister of security [Tony McNulty] says [when I asked if there’s empirical evidence for the decision to increase the length of detention without charge to 42 days]: ‘Honestly, no, I won’t provide an empirical basis,’ rather than attempt, in an increasingly embarrassing way, to deliver one.
This ‘age of terror’ depends on a hypothesis about the future, not about the facts of the present, and it is this that makes it so dangerous. The moment you are manoeuvred into a position where you are forced to debate somebody about civil liberties or human rights on certain imprecise assumptions about the future, which have to be taken on trust, then that is the moment when you have lost the debate. So I am extremely anxious about this.
Now moving on to the substance, the second of the terms we have here in this conference title: ‘free speech’. Well, it’s clear, and the minister reminded us, though I thought he took a reckless point because he said, ‘It would be quite wrong to shout ‘‘fire’’, here.’ Well, the usual, conventional example is that it would be wrong to shout fire in a crowded cinema, of course. And we have to tell the students this (and very few teachers do) – unless, that is, there is a fire! You have this real concern that a lot of students who studied constitutional law go to cinemas and there is a very small fire breaking out and they’re thinking to themselves, ‘Oh my God, but didn’t my professor say ‘‘don’t shout fire?’’ ‘ So a little knowledge can be a very dangerous thing. So I felt like intervening with the minister, but as he said himself, his answers were nearly as long as my questions – so I couldn’t.
Of course there has been control on speech in democratic society, but we are not that interested in that today; we are interested in a different kind of thing about which there is also an extremely long record – control on political speech in a democracy. Now, it is completely wrong to think of democratic countries as not having control on political speech. It has been ever thus. Most recently, and controversially, there are debates about race hate and religious hate, and those are the most obvious recent examples of controls on speech that emanate out of a democratic culture.
An obvious one, which reminds us that so much of this depends on context, is Holocaust denial. The president of Rwanda, Paul Kagame, spoke at the centre I direct, the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at the London School of Economics. It was a fairly controversial speech, and he got asked about his controls on the press, and in particular about new laws concerning the control of genocide denial. Of course it was asked by an American student for whom this sort of control is often anathema. His answer was: ‘They seem to have it in Switzerland and it does not cause any trouble; in Germany it does not cause any trouble; and it is not going cause any trouble in my country – because we need it.’ In other words, what the president was saying was that democratic cultures make judgments about what is necessary in their own culture and that this drives a great deal of control, not only of speech, simpliciter, but of political speech as well.
Now, in this country, when we talk about controls on extremism, I would say, we are talking about controls on political points of view that are put without any linkage to violence. That too has been a recurring theme in this society, in the entire democratic era. You might say the democratic era starts in 1929 or in 1919. It could even begin, if you had forgotten about the working class, in 1832. But since its inception, we have had control on political speech – and not just during both wars when it was severe. (In the Second World War, parenthetically, Churchill had to order a review of the magistrates’ cases in which anxious judges were throwing people in jail for causing despondency among the public. There was a fantastic debate in the House of Commons, where Churchill, as prime minister, said something along the lines of: ‘We are fighting for freedom, civil liberties and the rule of law, these magistrates have over interpreted the laws we passed, we have to stop them.’) Apart from the wars, in the 1920s, people of the Communist Party here were convicted of sedition. Their conviction was really of membership to the Communist Party, but sedition was the legal form. In 1934, an Act of Parliament was passed called the Incitement to Disaffection Act, which criminalised attempts to persuade the army of the rightness of the socialist cause. In the 1950s and in the 1960s there were political prosecutions under the official secrets legislation that was designed to tackle extremism – which then took the form of radical-left political speech. We have had it in the entire democratic era – so what’s new?
I’ll come to what’s new about the so-called ‘age of terror’, through the so-called terrorism problem – which was of course originally the Irish problem. There have been some references here to this, this afternoon. Memories seem to be extremely short. The legislation was mentioned in the Q&A with the minister. Throughout the problem of political violence in Northern Ireland, there were frequent examples of journalists being at the foreground of efforts by government to attack the peaceful purveyors of political points of view – and in particular to attack the messengers who covered incidents which were of concern to the government. In 1979, for example, Newsnight was compelled by pressure not to broadcast film it had of an IRA action in Carrickmore. In regards the attack on members of the British Army in West Belfast, there were orders that required the media to return its filming of those events, with a view to facilitating prosecution. There was an ABC news crew, which was headed by Pierre Salinger, which was arrested in Northern Ireland. There were frequent controls on the press. There was, it is said, the punishment of Thames TV, through the non- renewal of its franchise – I don’t know if it is the case – for having the temerity to broadcast Death on the Rock, a report that exposed the events in Gibraltar that led to the death of three members of the IRA. There was, above all, the media ban in 1988. A ban not only, as would have been claimed at the time, of IRA members, who were already prevented from appearing on television or radio as a result of proscription introduced in this country in 1974, but of persons who shared the political objectives of the Provisional IRA.
Now this is the point about chill, which is relevant: with the media ban in place, Mr McNulty, or the equivalent of the day, naturally says ‘We do not intend to destroy free speech; we are sending out signals of support for freedom.’ The reality is, however, that news editors, nervous members of the university computer department, radio talk shows and producers are not scrutinising the media ban, they’re not looking at the Internet – they are thinking there is a law that stops me doing ‘this’, but they are vague and anxious about what the ‘this’ is that they refuse to do. It is back to the magistrates during the Second World War. It is the broadcasting of a pop song, by the Pogues for example; it is the refusal to have an interview with persons pushing for the point of view that the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four have not been lawfully imprisoned because their convictions are unsafe and unsatisfactory. The ‘this’ is actually not the violent extremists being prohibited; the ‘this’ are the people on the wider periphery of the same mission, who find that their ability to enter into the public arena for discussion and debate is being undermined by the drive from within government to address so-called extremism.
Now, the United States is very well versed in this – the country with a strong supposed commitment to free speech that has forced out of existence leftist opinion within the country – so it is not all about law. In the United States, it is called the chill factor. And what we learn from the past – moving now to the contemporary, so-called ‘war on terror’ – is the danger of the chill factor, the danger of fear driving a liberal culture onto the defensive and making normal the repression that flows out of that fear. We had the surfacing of an extreme example when, in the immediate aftermath of the 7 July bombings, the government formed the view that it would be important to prevent the celebration of terrorism actions. You may remember in what is now the Terrorism Act 2006, Section 1, there was a brief period when there was a Terrorism Bill which had the plan of having a schedule of things you could celebrate and a schedule of things you couldn’t. So, if you rather fancied celebrating Cromwell for having chopped off the head of a King, that was okay. There was a period where it looked as though you could celebrate the 1916 Easter Rising, but you couldn’t celebrate anything to do with Islam. You couldn’t celebrate the removal of the Shah of Iran, for example, because it is about power – and the powerful are able to determine what they can celebrate and what they cannot. Now, this was removed, because debate exposed it as absurd, but the ‘power’ point remains.
The powerful have erected their current position usually off the backs of violence – not necessarily their own violence, but the violence of their predecessors – and they can celebrate that violence without fear, because they have the power to control the system. But those who have no power in the culture, those who critique the effect of the exercise of power on them, their rival stories of resistance to oppression, of colonial liberation, are condemned as the celebration of terrorism.
Now, finally, what’s different about this current age of terror, the extremism of today? Well, the IRA problem was one that produced in the end a solution; and it was always understood that there was the possibility of a solution. My real concern about this stuff, about the age of terror, is not the word ‘terror’ but the word ‘age’. It is a new situation from which we cannot remove ourselves. It requires no enemy. If you haven’t recently read George Orwell’s 1984, go back to it and read bits of it with this in mind. The unknown enemy who cannot be named, much less found, who never appears to fight back. We know, yes, there are 16 or 17 terrorist plots in the UK or 20 or 22 we are sometimes told, we don’t know whether it is the same number as last year or whether this has changed. Now, I can’t question the Secret Service’s briefings. For all I know these plots do exist. But there is a driven quality to this – a drive for a re- organisation of our culture, away from the commitment of liberal values and in the direction of the commitment of security, which I think is quite important.
One of the reasons why the 42-day detention period matters so much to me, is because opposition to it is a very strong signal that law should not be made on the basis of undisclosed fears about an uncertain future. And it is a blank cheque to the powerful – to push through everything that they desire off the back of that. I wonder what you thought about Mr McNulty’s response about his proposed objections to an extension to 90-days detention in three years, when a Conservative strongman of some sort or other is home secretary and there is a further push for yet more law? How can Labour oppose such a law? The culture will have shifted, with both of our main parties now in favour of extreme legislation on the basis of future threat. We will have lost something important, something liberal, in our political community.
I know that I haven’t dealt with law, which is also in the title, but it is on this point about the culture that I want to end. Do not look to law to dig you out of this hole if you believe in free speech, if you believe in a democratic culture that involves freedom for the powerless as well as for the powerful. Law usually sides with the powerful; law has always done so in this country, apart from one or two occasions, which are then paraded as evidence of the truth. Exceptions do not make rules; exceptions show the existence of the rules. In the 1930s, all the executive and police repression was upheld; in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s as well; the media ban was upheld in the House of Lords in the late 1980s. The stop and search powers in Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, which the minister acknowledges are being used too broadly, have been upheld by the House of Lords, in a recent case, Gillan v the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. So don’t be misled by avuncular old men being profiled in the liberal press. There are one or two exceptions, but do not rely on law to dig you out of this hole. Rely on political action, rely on generating enough head of steam to preserve our liberal values, so that it becomes common sense – not for Mr McNulty, not for the Mr McNulty of two or three years, when he is trying to rebuild his relationship on the left, but common sense for the McNultys of today, or the Lord Goldsmiths of last year. The culture will be more secure when people, like Churchill during the war, commit to free speech when they are in power and not only when they have left office.
© Conor Gearty and Index on Censorship
Join us on 25 October at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas 2015 for Question Everything an unconventional, unwieldy and disruptive day of talks, art and ideas featuring a broad range of speakers drawn from popular culture, the arts and academia. Moderated by Index on Censorship CEO Jodie Ginsberg.
This article is part of the summer 2008 issue of the global quarterly Index on Censorship magazine, with a special report on propaganda and war. Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
23 Sep 15 | Magazine, Volume 43.02 Summer 2014
In conjunction with the Cambridge Festival of Ideas 2015, we will be publishing a series of articles that complement many of the upcoming debates and discussions. We are offering these articles from Index on Censorship magazine for free (normally they are held within our paid-for archive) as part of our partnership with the festival. Below is an article by Jason DaPonte, on privacy on the internet taken from the summer 2014 issue. It’s a great starting point for those who plan to attend the Privacy in the digital age session at the festival this year.
Index on Censorship is a global quarterly magazine with reporters and contributing editors around the world. Founded in 1972, it promotes and defends the right to freedom of expression.
“Government may portray itself as the protector of privacy, but it’s the worst enemy of privacy and that’s borne out by the NSA revelations,” web and privacy guru Jeff Jarvis tells Index.
Jarvis, author of Public Parts: How Sharing in the Digital Age Improves the Way We Work and Live argues that this complacency is dangerous and that a debate on “publicness” is needed. Jarvis defines privacy “as an ethic of knowing someone else’s information (and whether sharing it further could harm someone)” and publicness as “an ethic of sharing your own information (and whether doing so could help someone)”.
In his book Public Parts and on his blog, he advocates publicness as an idea, claiming it has a number of personal and societal benefits including improving relationships and collaboration, and building trust.
He says in the United States the government can’t open post without a court order, but a different principle has been applied to electronic communications. “If it’s good enough for the mail, then why isn’t it good enough for email?”
While Jarvis is calling for public discussion on the topic, he’s also concerned about the “techno panic” the issue has sparked. “The internet gives us the power to speak, find and act as a [single] public and I don’t want to see that power lost in this discussion. I don’t want to see us lose a generous society based on sharing. The revolutionaries [in recent global conflicts] have been able to find each other and act, and that’s the power of tech. I hate to see how deeply we pull into our shells,” he says.
The Pew Research Centre predicts that by 2025, the “internet will become like electricity – less visible, yet more deeply embedded in people’s lives for good and ill.” Devices such as Google Glass (which overlays information from the web on to the real world via a pair of lenses in front of your eyes) and internet-connected body monitoring systems like, Nike+ and Fitbit, are all examples of how we are starting to become surrounded by a new generation of constantly connected objects. Using an activity monitor like Nike+ means you are transmitting your location and the path of a jog from your shoes to the web (via a smartphone). While this may not seem like particularly private data, a sliding scale emerges for some when these devices start transmitting biometric data, or using facial recognition to match data with people you meet in the street.
As apps and actions like this become more mainstream, understanding how privacy can be maintained in this environment requires us to remember that the internet is decentralised; it is not like a corporate IT network where one department (or person) can switch the entire thing off through a topdown control system.
The internet is a series of interconnected networks, constantly exchanging and copying data between servers on the network and then on to the next. While data may take usual paths, if one path becomes unavailable or fails, the IP (Internet Protocol) system re-routes the data. This de-centralisation is key to the success and ubiquity of the internet – any device can get on to the network and communicate with any other, as long as it follows very basic communication rules.
This means there is no central command on the internet; there is no Big Brother unless we create one. This de-centralisation may also be the key to protecting privacy as the network becomes further enmeshed in our everyday lives. The other key is common sense. When asked what typical users should do to protect themselves on the internet, Jarvis had this advice: “Don’t be an idiot, and don’t forget that the internet is a lousy place to keep secrets. Always remember that what you put online could get passed around.”
As the internet has come under increasing control by corporations, certain services, particularly on the web, have started to store, and therefore control, huge amounts of data about us. Google, Facebook, Amazon and others are the most obvious because of the sheer volume of data they track about their millions of users, but nearly every commercial website tracks some sort of behavioural data about its users. We’ve allowed corporations to gather this data either because we don’t know it’s happening (as is often the case with cookies that track and save information about our browsing behaviour) or in exchange for better services – free email accounts (Gmail), personalised recommendations (Amazon) or the ability to connect with friends (Facebook).
“A transaction of mutual value isn’t surveillance,” Jarvis argues, referencing Google’s Priority Inbox (which analyses your emails to determine which are “important” based on who you email and the relevance of the subject) as an example. He expands on this explaining that as we look at what is legal in this space we need to be careful to distinguish between how data is gathered and how it is used. “We have to be very, very careful about restricting the gathering of knowledge, careful of regulating what you’re allowed to know. I don’t want to be in a regime where we regulate knowledge.”
Sinister or not, the internet giants and those that aspire to similar commercial success find themselves under continued and increasing pressure from shareholders, marketers and clients to deliver more and more data about you, their customers. This is the big data that is currently being hailed as something of a Holy Grail of business intelligence. Whether we think of it as surveillance or not, we know – at least on some level – that these services have a lot of our information at their disposal (eg the contents of all of our emails, Facebook posts, etc) and we have opted in by accepting terms of service when we sign up to use the service.
“The NSA’s greatest win would be to convince people that privacy doesn’t exist,” says Danny O’Brien, international director of the US-based digital rights campaigners Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Privacy nihilism is the state of believing that: ‘If I’m doing nothing wrong, I have nothing to hide, so it doesn’t matter who’s watching me’.”
This has had an unintended effect of creating what O’Brien describes as “unintentional honeypots” of data that tempt those who want to snoop, be it malicious hackers, other corporations or states. In the past, corporations protected this data from hackers who might try to get credit card numbers (or similar) to carry out theft. However, these “honeypot” operators have realised that while they were always subject to the laws and courts of various countries, they are now also protecting their data from state security agencies. This largely came to light following the alleged hacking of Google’s Gmail by China. Edward Snowden’s revelations about the United States’ NSA and the UK’s GCHQ further proved the extent to which states were carrying out not just targeted snooping, but also mass surveillance on their own and foreign citizens.
To address this issue, many of the corporations have turned on data encryption; technology that protects the data as it is in transit across the nodes (or “hops”) across the internet so that it can only be read by the intended recipient (you can tell if this is on when you see the address bar in your internet browser say “https” instead of “http”). While this costs them more, it also costs security agencies more money and time to try to get past it. So by having it in place, the corporations are creating a form of “passive activism”.
Jarvis thinks this is one of the tools for protecting users’ privacy, and says the task of integrating encryption effectively largely lies with the corporations that are gathering and storing personal information.
“Google thought that once they got [users’ data] into their world it was safe. That’s why the NSA revelations are shocking. It’s getting better now that companies are encrypting as they go,” he said. “It’s become the job of the corporations to protect their customers.”
Encryption can’t solve every problem though. Codes are made to be cracked and encrypted content is only one level of data that governments and others can snoop on.
O’Brien says the way to address this is through tools and systems that take advantage of the decentralised nature of the internet, so we remain in control of our data and don’t rely on third party to store or transfer it for us. The volunteer open-source community has started to create these tools.
Protecting yourself online starts with a common-sense approach. “The internet is a lousy place to keep a secret,” Jarvis says. “Once someone knows your information (online or not), the responsibility of what to do with it lies on them,” says Jarvis. He suggests consumers be more savvy about what they’re signing up to share when they accept terms and conditions, which should be presented in simple language. He also advocates setting privacy on specific messages at the point of sharing (for example, the way you can define exactly who you share with in very specific ways on Google+), rather than blanket terms for privacy.
Understanding how you can protect yourself first requires you to understand what you are trying to protect. There are largely three types of data that can be snooped on: the content of a message or document itself (eg a discussion with a counsellor about specific thoughts of suicide), the metadata about the specific communication (eg simply seeing someone visited a suicide prevention website) and, finally, metadata about the communication itself that has nothing to do with the content (eg the location or device you visited from, what you were looking at before and after, who else you’ve recently contacted).
You can’t simply turn privacy on and off – even Incognito mode on Google’s Chrome browser tells you that you aren’t really fully “private” when you use it. While technologies that use encryption and decentralisation can help protect the first two types of content that can be snooped on (specific content and metadata about the communication), there is little that can be done about the third type of content (the location and behavioural information). This is because networks need to know where you are to connect you with other users and content (even if it’s encrypted). This is particularly true for mobile networks; they simply can’t deliver a call, SMS or email without knowing where your device is.
A number of tools are on the horizon that should help citizens and consumers protect themselves, but many of them don’t feel ready for mainstream use yet and, as Jarvis argues, integrating this technology could be primarily the responsibility of internet corporations.
In protecting yourself, it is important to remember that surveillance existed long before the internet and forms an important part of most nation’s security plans. Governments are, after all, tasked with protecting their citizens and have long carried out spying under certain legal frameworks that protect innocent and average citizens.
O’Brien likens the way electronic surveillance could be controlled to the way we control the military. “We have a military and it fights for us…, which is what surveillance agencies should do. The really important thing we need to do with these organisations is to rein them back so they act like a modern civilised part of our national defence rather than generals gone crazy who could undermine their own society as much as enemies of the state.”
The good news is that the public – and the internet itself – appear to be at a junction. We can choose between a future where we can take advantage of our abilities to self-correct, decentralise power and empower individuals, or one where states and corporations can shackle us with technology. The first option will take hard work; the second would be the result of complacency.
Awareness of how to protect the information put online is important, but in most cases average citizens should not feel that they need to “lock down” with every technical tool available to protect themselves. First and foremost, users that want protection should consider whether the information they’re protecting should be online in the first place and, if they decide to put it online, should ensure they understand how the platform they’re sharing it with protects them.
For those who do want to use technical tools, the EFF recommends using ones that don’t rely on a single commercial third party, favouring those that take advantage of open, de-centralised systems (since the third parties can end up under surveillance themselves). Some of these are listed (see box), most are still in the “created by geeks for use by geeks” status and could be more user-friendly.
Privacy protectors
TOR
This tool uses layers of encryption and routing through a volunteer network to get around censorship and surveillance. Its high status among privacy advocates was enhanced when it was revealed that an NSA presentation had stated that “TOR stinks”. TOR can be difficult to install and there are allegations that simply being a TOR user can arouse government suspicion as it is known to be used by criminals. http://www.torproject.org
OTR
“Off the Record” instant messaging is enabled by this plugin that applies end-to-end encryption to other messaging software. It creates a seamless experience once set up, but requires both users of the conversation to be running the plug-in in order to provide protection. Unfortunately, it doesn’t yet work with the major chat clients, unless they are aggregated into yet another third party piece of software, such as Pidgin or Adium. https://otr.cypherpunks.ca/
Disconnect
This browser plugin tries to put privacy control into your hands by making it clear when internet tracking companies or third parties are trying to watch your behaviour. Its user-friendly inter- face makes it easier to control and understand. Right now, it only works on Chrome and Firefox. http://www.disconnect.me
Silent Circle
This is a solution for encrypting mobile communications – but only works between devices in the “silent circle” – so good for certain types of uses but not yet a mainstream solution, as encryption wouldn’t extend to all calls and messages that users make. Out-of-circle calls are currently only available in North America. https://silentcircle.com
©Jason DaPonte and Index on Censorship
Join us on 25 October at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas 2015 for Question Everything an unconventional, unwieldy and disruptive day of talks, art and ideas featuring a broad range of speakers drawn from popular culture, the arts and academia. Moderated by Index on Censorship CEO Jodie Ginsberg.
This article is part of the summer 2014 issue of the global quarterly Index on Censorship magazine, with a special report on propaganda and war. Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
23 Sep 15 | Magazine
In conjunction with the Cambridge Festival of Ideas 2015, we will be publishing a series of articles that complement many of the upcoming debates and discussions. We are offering these articles from Index on Censorship magazine for free (normally they are held within our paid-for archive) as part of our partnership with the festival. Below is an article by children’s book author Norma Klein, on the censorship of children’s books, taken from the spring 1987 issue. It’s a great starting point for those who plan to attend the Banned books: controversy between the covers session at the festival this year.
Index on Censorship is a global quarterly magazine with reporters and contributing editors around the world. Founded in 1972, it promotes and defends the right to freedom of expression.
I used to feel distinguished, almost honoured, when my young books were singled out to be censored. Now, alas, censorship has become so common in the children’s book field in America that almost no one is left unscathed. Some of the most conservative writers are being attacked; it’s reached a point of ludicrousness which, for me, was symbolised by my most recent encounter with ‘the other side’ in Gwinett county, Georgia, in April 1986.
Usually, my books are attacked for their sexual content. The two school board meetings I had attended in the early 1980s, one in Oregon, one in the State of Washington, had centred on two books for older teens, It’s Okay if You Don’t Love Me, a book about two 18- year-olds having a love affair, and Breaking Up, a novel about a 15-year-old girl who discovers her mother is gay. I might add parenthetically that these books have just been published in England for the first time by Pan Books in a new series aimed at teenagers, ‘Horizons’. Already, as in America, they are selling well and already, as in America, I have been told of indignant parents storming into bookstores and objecting to certain passages. It seems that things are not very different in other countries.
What was unusual about the Gwinnett county case was that the book selected to be attacked was one of my early ones, Confessions of an Only Child, about an eight-year-old girl. The offending sentence was one where the girl’s father is putting up wallpaper. Here it is in its entirety:
‘God damn it,’ Dad said as the wallpaper swung around and whacked him in the face.
When the paperback publisher of Confessions first heard of the attack, he attempted to defend the book in the following way:
Abrasive words are sometimes used by writers to add definition to a character or a story; they give the reader an understanding of the situation or kind of person speaking, but are not meant to be words which the reader should use or admire. It is our belief that the family relationships are so positive in this book that they far outweigh the use of realistic language.
My attacker, Theresa Wilson, a stunning blonde, had been heartened by her success in having another book she objected to, Deanie by Judy Blume, removed from the shelves. Her first attempt to remove my book was defeated by a 10-member review panel consisting of six parents, three teachers and a librarian. Ms Wilson claimed to have ‘stumbled’ upon the offending passage one afternoon while in the Beaver Ridge library looking for books that contain material to which she might object. In her thirties, she has no profession and, in a sense, being a censor has led to her becoming a local celebrity; she now, whether her attacks succeed or fail, appears regularly on TV and radio and is covered widely in local newspapers. The 10-member panel voted to keep Confessions on the shelves; only one person voted to keep it on a restricted shelf. ‘The consensus is that the book had literary merit for the age group intended,’ said principal Becky Hopcraft.
Incidentally, Ms Wilson said she didn’t object to my heroine’s mother saying, ‘Ye Gods,’ in the next line, because she does not believe ‘Gods’ refers to the Christian god. She wants every book containing the word ‘damn’ restricted from Gwinnett elementary schools. She cited a US Supreme Court ruling against hostility toward religion and said the use of God Damn in Confessions indicated a ‘hostility toward Christianity’.
All this, the initial attack on my book and its initial success in being retained on the shelves, helped to achieve an important result — the founding of a group called Gwinnett Citizens for Freedom in Education. Initially a small group, it now has nearly 500 members. Its president, Lorna Cox, said she was amazed at the diversity of the group’s members, proving that liberals in America are not, as some right-wingers insist, an elitist minority. ‘We’ve got people who didn’t graduate from high school,’ Ms Cox said, ‘college graduates, doctors, professionals, and people who aren’t even affiliated with a school but have a deep, burning desire to be involved in education.’ The group participates in workshops to learn more about censorship at the local and national levels and contacts school administrators each week to learn about potential book bannings.
As in the cases involving It’s Okay if You Don’t Love Me, and Breaking Up, my travel expenses to Georgia were paid by the author’s organisation, PEN. They have a Freedom to Read committee with a fund for cases like this. My own reason for attending these meetings is that I feel having the author appear and help argue the case not only gives heart to the local anti-censorship organisations involved, such as Gwinnett Citizens for Freedom in Education, but may focus national attention on the case. Perhaps it was co- incidental, but CBS did appear in the courtroom to cover the debate for a TV segment on ‘secular humanism’.
Before flying to Georgia I was interviewed by phone. I was quoted as saying, ‘I’m not a religious person… To me the phrase god damn has no more negative a connotation than the expression, Oh gosh. I added that I attributed the swing toward censorship in America to the conservative mood of the Reagan administration. When I arrived, I was told by two of my supporters that the negative reference to Reagan was a mistake. ‘Everyone is for him down here,’ they said. I have to add parenthetically that one of the reasons I write the kinds of books I do and am, perhaps ingenuously, surprised at the reaction they provoke, is due to the fact that I’ve lived all my life in New York City and know personally only liberal people. I’ve never met anyone who voted for Reagan; I am always amazed when the Republicans win an election. But it’s probably similar that in a two-week stay in London’ in the spring of 1986,1 didn’t meet anyone who was for Margaret Thatcher either. This may, however, give me a kind of inner freedom from certain restrictions, due simply to underestimating the power of the right.
The school board meeting I attended was crowded with supporters from both sides. It was conducted as a kind of mock trial. Both sides were allowed to question anyone from the other side about anything that was relevant to the case. I was pleased and relieved that every time Ms Wilson tried to bring the questioning around to my own personal religious beliefs, she was told that was not relevant to the book. In a perverse way I found her performance at the trial fascinatiing. She alternately flirted with, and tried to antagonise, the three-member school board which consisted of two men and a woman. Luckily for me, her case was weak and she overstepped the bounds of tolerance — even within a conservative, religious community — by telling the school board members that if they didn’t ban my book, they would, on Judgment Day, go straight to Hell. ‘One day each and every one of you will stand before God almighty and you will answer to how’you believe, how you voted, how you stand.’ Evidently this threat did not frighten anyone sufficiently.
The closest Ms Wilson got to making me come forward and state my personal beliefs was when she asked if I considered myself to be ‘above God’. I responded, ‘I assume that’s a rhetorical question.’ She laughed nervously and said she didn’t know what ‘rhetorical’ meant.
Confessions of an Only Child is about a family in which the mother gets pregnant and loses her baby. It shows how this affects the heroine who was enjoying her only child status. In deciding that Confessions had ‘redeeming educational value’, one of the board members, Louise Radloff, stated, ‘I think this book has much literary merit and it shows an open discussion within the family’. I had argued in my presentation that I felt that books could be an avenue to open discussion… a way to bring parents and children closer together, that simply having a book available was not forcing it on anyone.
What amazed me, though, was that in their closing remarks, though each school board member re-iterated the literary values of my book, all three said that, indeed, the phrase ‘God damn’, was offensive and should have been left out. One board member said he, thank heaven, had never used that word. Another said he had used it once, at the age of 10 and had been beaten so severely by his parents for this that he had never used it again. I am utterly unable to judge the sincerity of these remarks. What I did feel was the pressure on everyone living in these suburban communities to conform to what is felt to be a general set of beliefs. People are terribly afraid to come out and say they are feminists, atheists, or even, God forbid, Democrats.
In a sense this is a success story. Not only will my book remain on the shelves, but the Gwinnett Citizens for Freedom in Education feel heartened that the positive publicity they received will help them in future battles. But Theresa Wilson is, seemingly, not daunted. She’s already after another book, Go Ask Alice. ‘I don’t love publicity,’ she said when interviewed on a local radio show the day after the hearing. ‘I love showing the glory of God.’ Sadly, even the local people who are against her regard her as good copy. Although she had lost her case, she was brought forward to be on the radio show with me and most of the time was spent, not debating the issues involved, but in baiting her with peculiar call-in questions from the audience. What a pity. But still, no matter how absurd and tiny this one case is, I feel I would do it again for my own books and would encourage other authors to do the same. Passivity and inaction only encourages censorship groups even more. I think now they are beginning to realise they will, at least, have a fight on their hands.
Reporting the Third World
World leaders, or their top ministers, in an effort to arrive at something we call ‘balanced coverage’. Most Third World leaders feel you are either for ’em or against ’em and there is not much middle ground to walk upon. Some, as in Saudi Arabia, just don’t want to talk to the Western press. I can remember one visit to the Saudi kingdom in early 1981 when four American correspondents — from the New York Times, Time magazine, the Associated Press, and myself from The Washington Post — jointly applied for an interview with either King Khalid or Crown Prince Fahd. Each of us knew it was unlikely either would bother with an interview for just one publication, but here was a broad segment of the US print media asking collectively for an interview. After waiting around for two weeks, we collectively gave up and left.
One major problem for American correspondents is the near total ignorance of Third World leaders about how the Western media work and how to use them for their own ends. While the correspondent may regard his or her request for an interview with a leader or top minister as a chance to air their views, they seem to look upon it as a huge favour which they are uncertain will be rewarded in any way.
Other forms of indirect censorship come in control over a correspondent’s access to the story or means of communication. Israel restricted, or at least tried to restrict, access to southern Lebanon after its invasion in June 1982 to those it felt were sympathetic to its cause or important to convince of its view. The policy never really worked because correspondents could always get into Israeli-occupied territory from the north through one back road or another. But it got more difficult as time went on. The Israeli attempt at restricting access to southern Lebanon was hardly the worst example of this kind of censorship I experienced in nearly two decades of working in the Third World, however. Covering the war between Iran and Iraq was, and remains, far more difficult. In four years, I never once got a visa to Iran. I got to Baghdad several times, but imagine my surprise the first time customs officials seized my typewriter at the airport and told me I would have to get special permission from the Information Ministry to bring it in. (At the airport in Tripoli there was a roomful of confiscated typewriters the last time I visited there in September 1984.) Whether one was allowed to the Iraqi war front depended on either an Iraqi victory or a lull in the war. As for permission to travel into Iraqi Kurdistan, it was never granted to any Western correspondent I can think of in the four-to-five years I was covering the Middle East.
The other game Iraqi information officials play is attempting to censor your coverage of the war. When I first went there, there was a Ministry of Information official sitting at the hotel who had to okay your copy or you could not send it out by phone or telex. This kind of direct censorship of copy was rare in my experience, however. Other than Israel, where military news is supposed to pass through the censor’s office, and Iraq and Libya, I can think of no examples where I had to submit my copy before sending it.
Are the techniques of indirect censorship getting worse? In the areas of the world where I have worked, I am not sure. If Syria has become worse, Iraq is probably better today. Egypt has definitely got better, and so had Kuwait until recently. Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, has restricted access to a far greater degree in the past two years, and Bahrain has become more sensitive. South Africa has taken a turn for the worse. Countries that were always difficult to cover, such as Zaire, Malawi, Ethiopia and Angola, remain more or less the same.
As economic problems have got worse or rulers have felt a greater threat to their regimes, Third World governments seem to be tightening up when it comes to outside press coverage.
If this is indeed the underlying principle governing the degree of press censorship, then the problem may be more cyclical than linear, getting worse or better according to the political and economic health of a country or the special challenges it is facing at that time.
Who believes it?
‘That is how the theory goes: Restrict the press to supportive comment, and a country’s life will be calmer and better. But experience and reason suggest that the opposite will happen. Faulty government policies, if they are not subject to real criticism, grow worse. Autocrats become more autocratic. Can anyone believe that repression of criticism leads to efficiency in a society, to new ideas?’
Anthony Lewis, The New York Times, February 1987
© Norma Klein and Index on Censorship
Join us on 25 October at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas 2015 for Question Everything an unconventional, unwieldy and disruptive day of talks, art and ideas featuring a broad range of speakers drawn from popular culture, the arts and academia. Moderated by Index on Censorship CEO Jodie Ginsberg.
This article is part of the spring 1987 issue of the global quarterly Index on Censorship magazine. Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
23 Sep 15 | Magazine
In conjunction with the Cambridge Festival of Ideas 2015, we will be publishing a series of articles that complement many of the upcoming debates and discussions. We are offering these articles from Index on Censorship magazine for free (normally they are held within our paid-for archive) as part of our partnership with the festival. Below is an article by author Erica Jong, on pornographic material in art and literature, taken from our summer 1995 issue. It’s a great starting point for those who plan to attend The body politic: censorship and the female body session at the festival this year.
Index on Censorship is a global quarterly magazine with reporters and contributing editors around the world. Founded in 1972, it promotes and defends the right to freedom of expression.
Pornographic material has been present in the art and literature of every society in every historical period. What has changed from epoch to epoch – or even from one decade to another – is the ability of such material to flourish publicly and to be distributed legally.
After nearly 100 years of agitating for freedom to publish, we find that the enemies of freedom have multiplied, rather than diminished. They are Christians, Muslims, oppressive totalitarian regimes, even well- meaning social libertarians who happen to be feminists, teachers, school boards, librarians. This should not surprise us since, as Margaret Mead pointed out 40 years ago, the demand for state censorship is usually ‘a response to the presence within the society of heterogeneous groups of people with differing standards and aspirations.’ As our culture becomes more diverse, we can expect more calls for censorship rather than fewer.
Mark Twain’s notorious 1601 ... Conversation As It Was By The Social Fireside, In The Time of The Tudors fascinates me because it demonstrates Mark Twain’s passion for linguistic experiment and how allied it is with his compulsion toward ‘deliberate lewdness’.
The phrase ‘deliberate lewdness’ is Vladimir Nabokov’s. In a witty afterword to his ground-breaking 1955 novel Lolita, he links the urge to create pornography with ‘the verve of a fine poet in a wanton mood’ and regrets that ‘in modern times the term “pornography” connotes mediocrity, commercialism and certain strict rules of narration.’ In contemporary porn, Nabokov says, ‘action has to be limited to the copulation of cliches.’ Poetry is always out of the question . ‘Style, structure, imagery should never distract the reader from his tepid lust.’
In choosing to write from the point of view of ‘the Pepys of that day, the same being cup-bearer to Queen Elizabeth’ in 1601, Mark Twain was transporting himself to a world that existed before the invention of sexual hypocrisy. The Elizabethans were openly bawdy. They found bodily functions funny and sex arousing to the muse. Restoration wits and Augustan satirists had the same openness to bodily functions and the same respect for Eros. Only in the nineteenth century did prudery (and the threat of legal censure) begin to paralyse the author‘s hand. Shakespeare, Rochester and Pope were far more fettered politically than we are, but the fact was that they were not required to put condoms on their pens when the matter of sex arose. They were pleased to remind their readers of the essential messiness of the body. They followed a classical tradition that often expressed moral indignation through scatology, ‘Oh Celia, Celia, Celia shits,’ writes Swift, as if she were the first woman in history to do so. In his so-called ‘unprintable poems’, Swift is debunking the conventions of courtly love – as well as expressing his own deep misogyny – but he is doing so in a spirit that Catullus and juvenal would have recognised. The satirist lashes the world to bring the world to its senses. It does the dance of the satyrs around our follies.
Twain’s scatology serves this purpose as well, but it is also a warm-up for his creative process, a sort of pump-priming. Stuck in the prudish nineteenth century, Mark Twain craved the freedom of the ancients. In championing ‘deliberate lewdness’ in 1601, he bestowed the gift of freedom on himself.
Even more interesting is the fact that Mark Twain was writing 1601 during the very same summer (1876) that he was ‘tearing along on a new book’ – the first 16 chapters of a novel he then referred to as ‘Huck Finn’s autobiograph’. This conjunction is hardly coincidental. 1601 and Huckleberry Finn have a great deal in common besides linguistic experimentation. According to Justin Kaplan, ‘both were implicit rejections of the taboos and codes of polite society and both were experiments in using the vernacular as a literary medium.’
In order to find the true voice of a book, the author must be free to play without fear of reprisals. All writing blocks come from excessive self-judgement, the internalised voice of the critical parent telling the author’s imagination that it is a dirty little boy or girl. ‘Hah!’ says the author, ‘I will flaun t the voice of parental propriety and break free!’ This is why pornographic spirit is always related to unhampered creativity. Artists are fascinated with filth because we know that in it everything human is born. Human beings emerge between piss and shit and so do novels and poems. Only by letting go of the inhibition that makes us bow to social propriety can we delve into the depths of the unconscious. We assert our freedom with pornographic play. If we are lucky, we keep that freedom long enough to create a masterpiece like Huckleberry Finn.
But the two compulsions are more than just related; they are causally intertwined.
When Huckleberry Finn was published in 1885, Louisa May Alcott put her finger on exactly what mattered about the novel even as she condemned it: ‘If Mr Clemens cannot think of something better to tell our pure- minded lads and lasses, he had best stop writing for them.’ What Alcott didn’t know was that ‘our pure-minded lads and lasses’ aren’t. But Mark Twain knew. It is not at all surprising that during that summer of high scatological spirits Twain should also give birth to the irreverent voice of Huck. If Little Women fails to go as deep as Twain’s masterpiece, it is precisely because of Alcott’s concern with pure mindedness. Niceness is ever the enemy of art. If you worry about what the neighbours, critics, parents and supposedly pure-minded censors think, you will never create a work that defies the restrictions of the conscious mind and delves into the world o f dreams.
The artist needs pornography as a way into the unconscious and history proves that if this licence is not granted, it will be stolen. Mark Twain had 1601 privately printed. Picasso kept pornographic notebooks that were only exhibited after his death.
1601 is deliberately lewd. It delights in stinking up the air of propriety. It delights in describing great thundergusts of farts which make great stenches and pricks which are stiff until cunts ‘take ye stiffness out of them’. In the midst of all this ribaldry, the assembled company speaks of many things – poetry, theatre, art, politics. Twain knew that the muse flies on the wings of flatus, and he was having such a good time writing this Elizabethan pastiche that the humour shines through a hundred years and twenty later. I dare you to read 1601 without giggling and guffawing.
Erica Jong became internationally famous in 1973-4 with the publication of her novel Fear of Flying, which sold over 10 million copies worldwide. She has also written several collections of poetry and six further novels, most recently Any Woman’s Blues
Excerpted from a paper delivered at a conference on Expression, Offence and Censorship, organised by the Institute for Public Policy Research in June 1995. A full report of the conference, including contributions from Bernard Williams, Michael Grade, Clare Short MP and Chris Smith MP will be published shortly. Details from IPPR, 30-32 Southampton Street, London WC2E 7RA, UK
© Erica Jong and Index on Censorship
Join us on 25 October at the Cambridge Festival of Ideas 2015 for Question Everything an unconventional, unwieldy and disruptive day of talks, art and ideas featuring a broad range of speakers drawn from popular culture, the arts and academia. Moderated by Index on Censorship CEO Jodie Ginsberg.
This article is part of the summer 1995 issue of the global quarterly Index on Censorship magazine. Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
23 Sep 15 | Campaigns, mobile, Statements
Address for response c/o
Campaign for Freedom of Information
Unit 109
Davina House
137-149 Goswell Rd
London EC1V 7ET
The Rt Hon David Cameron MP
Prime Minister
10 Downing Street
London SW1A 2AA
21 September 2015
Dear Prime Minister,
We are writing to express our serious concern about the government’s approach to the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act and in particular about the
Commission on Freedom of Information and the proposal to introduce fees for tribunal appeals under the Act.
It is clear from the Commission’s terms of reference that its purpose is to consider new restrictions to the Act. The Commission’s brief is to review the Act to consider: whether there is an appropriate balance between openness and the need to protect sensitive information; whether the ‘safe space’ for policy development and implementation is adequately recognised and whether changes are needed to reduce the Act’s ‘burden’ on public authorities. The ministerial announcement of the Commission’s formation stressed the need to protect the government’s ‘private space’ for policy-making.1 There is no indication that the Commission is expected to consider how the right of access might need to be improved.
The Commission’s five members consist of two former home secretaries, Jack Straw and Lord Howard of Lympne (Michael Howard), a former permanent secretary, Lord Burns, a former independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, Lord Carlile of Berriew (Alex Carlile) and the chair of a regulatory body subject to FOI, Dame Patricia Hodgson. A government perspective on the Act’s operation will be well represented on the Commission itself.
One of the Commission’s members, Jack Straw, has repeatedly maintained that the Act provides too great a level of disclosure. Mr Straw has argued that the FOI exemption for the formulation of government policy should not be subject to the Act’s public interest test.2 Such information would then automatically be withheld in all circumstances even where no harm from disclosure was likely or the public interest clearly justified openness. Mr Straw has also suggested that the Supreme Court exceeded its powers in ruling that the ministerial veto cannot be used to overturn a court or tribunal decision under the Act unless strict conditions are satisfied.3 He has argued that there should be charges for FOI requests and that it should be significantly easier for public authorities to refuse requests on cost grounds.4 Mr
Straw’s publicly expressed views cover all the main issues within the Commission’s terms of reference. Speaking in the Commons shortly before the Commission’s appointment, the Justice Secretary, Michael Gove, expressly cited Mr Straw’s views with approval saying that he had been ‘very clear
about the defects in the way in which the Act has operated’.5
Another member of the Commission is Ofcom’s chair, Dame Patricia Hodgson. In 2012, when she was its deputy Chair, Ofcom stated that ‘there is no
doubt’ that the FOI Act has had a ‘chilling effect’ on the recording of information by public authorities. One of the Commission’s priorities is likely to be to consider whether there has been such an effect — and whether the right of access should be restricted to prevent it. Ofcom has also
called for it to be made easier for authorities to refuse requests on cost grounds and for the time limits for responding to requests to be increased.6
An independent Commission is expected to reach its views based on the evidence presented to it rather than the pre-existing views of its members. Indeed, in appointing members to such a body we would expect the government to expressly avoid those who appear to have already reached and expressed firm views. It has done the opposite. The government does not appear to intend the Commission to carry out an independent and open minded
inquiry. Such a review cannot provide a proper basis for significant changes to the FOI Act. The short timescale for the Commission’s report, which is due by the end of November, further reinforces this impression. At the time of writing, half way towards the Commission’s final deadline, it has so far not even invited evidence from the public.
The FOI Act was the subject of comprehensive post-legislative scrutiny by the Justice Committee in 2012 which found that the Act had been ‘a significant enhancement of our democracy’ and concluded ‘We do not believe there has been any general harmful effect at all on the ability to conduct business in the public service, and in our view the additional burdens are outweighed by the benefits’. We question the need for a further review now.
We are also concerned about the government’s proposal to introduce fees for appeals against the Information Commissioner’s decisions.7 Under the proposals, an appeal to the First-tier Tribunal on the papers would cost £100 while an oral hearing would cost £600. The introduction of fees for employment tribunal appeals has led to a drastic decrease in the number of cases brought. A similar effect on the number of
FOI appeals is likely. Requesters often seek information about matters of public concern, so deterring them from appealing will deny the public information of wider public interest. On the other hand, fees are unlikely to discourage public authorities from challenging pro-disclosure decisions, so the move will lead to an inequality of arms between requesters and authorities. Given that the Ministry of Justice and the Justice Committee have recently begun to review the impact of employment tribunal fees on access to justice we find it remarkable that this proposal should be put forward before the results of their inquiries are even known.
We regard the FOI Act as a vital mechanism of accountability which has transformed the public’s rights to information and substantially improved the scrutiny of public authorities. We would deplore any attempt to weaken it.
Yours sincerely,
Act Now Training, Ibrahim Hasan, Director
Action on Smoking and Health, Deborah Arnott, Chief Executive
Against Violence and Abuse, Donna Covey, Director
Animal Aid, Andrew Tyler, Director
Archant, Jeff Henry, Chief Executive
ARTICLE 19, Thomas Hughes, Executive Director
Article 39, Carolyne Willow, Director
Belfast Telegraph, Gail Walker, Editor
Big Brother Watch, Emma Carr, Director
British Deaf Association, Dr Terry Riley, Chair
British Humanist Association, Andrew Copson, Chief Executive
British Muslims for Secular Democracy, Nasreen Rehman, Chair
BSkyB, John Ryley, Head of Sky News
Burma Campaign UK, Mark Farmaner, Director
Campaign Against Arms Trade, Ann Feltham, Parliamentary Co-ordinator
Campaign for Better Transport, Stephen Joseph, Chief Executive
Campaign for Freedom of Information, Maurice Frankel, Director
Campaign for National Parks, Ruth Bradshaw, Policy and Research Manager
Campaign for Press & Broadcasting Freedom, Ann Field, Chair
Centre for Public Scrutiny, Jacqui McKinlay, Executive Director
Chartered Institute of Library & Information Professionals, Nick Poole, Chief Executive
Children England, Kathy Evans, Chief Executive
Children’s Rights, Alliance for England, Louise King, Co-Director
CN Group Limited, Robin Burgess, Chief Executive
Community Reinvest, Dr Jo Ram, Co-Founder
Computer Weekly, Bryan Glick, Editor in Chief
CORE, Marilyn Croser, Director
Corporate Watch / Corruption Watch, Susan Hawley, Policy Director
Coventry Telegraph, Keith Perry, Editor
Cruelty Free International, Michelle Thew, Chief Executive Officer
CTC, the national cycling charity, Roger Geffen, Campaigns and Policy Director
Daily Mail, Paul Dacre, Editor; Jon Steafel, Deputy Editor; Peter Wright, Editor Emeritus; Charles Garside, Assistant Editor; Liz Harley, Head of Legal
Debt Resistance UK
Deighton Pierce Glynn, Sue Willman, Partner
Democratic Audit, Sean Kippin, Managing Editor
Disabled People Against Cuts, Linda Burnip, Co-Founder
Down’s Syndrome Association, Carol Boys, Chief Executive
Drone Wars UK, Chris Cole, Director
English PEN, Jo Glanville, Director; Maureen Freely, President
Equality and Diversity Forum, Ali Harris, Chief Executive
Evening Standard, Sarah Sands, Editor
Exaro, Mark Watts, Editor in Chief
Finance Uncovered, Nick Mathiason, Director
Friends of the Earth, Guy Shrubsole, Campaigner
Friends, Families and Travellers, Chris Whitwell, Director
Gender Identity Research and Education Society, Christl Hughes, Legal Consultant
Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment of Children, Peter Newell, Co-ordinator
Global Witness, Simon Taylor, Co-Founder and Director
Greenpeace, John Sauven, Executive Director
Guardian News and Media Limited, Gillian Phillips, Director of Editorial Legal Services
Hacked Off, Dr Evan Harris, Executive Director
i, Oliver Duff, Editor
Inclusion London, Tracey Lazard, Chief Executive Officer
independent.co.uk, Christian Broughton, Editor
Index on Censorship, Jodie Ginsberg, Chief Executive Officer
INQUEST, Deborah Coles, Co-Director
Involve, Simon Burall, Director
Johnston Press Editorial Board, Jeremy Clifford, Chairman
Jubilee Debt Campaign, Sarah‐Jayne Clifton, Director
KM Group, Geraldine Allinson, Chairman
Labour Campaign for Human Rights, Andrew Noakes, Director
Law Centres Network, Julie Bishop, Director
Leigh Day, Russell Levy, Head of Clinical Negligence
Liberty, Bella Sankey, Policy Director
Liverpool Echo, Alastair Machray, Editor
London Mining Network, Richard Solly, Co-ordinator
Loughborough and Shepshed Echo, Andy Rush, Editor
LUSH, Mark Constantine, Managing Director
medConfidential, Phil Booth, Co-ordinator
Metro, Ted Young, Editor
Migrants’ Rights Network, Don Flynn, Director
Move Your Money UK, Fionn Travers-Smith, Campaign Manager
mySociety, Mark Cridge, Chief Executive
NAT (National AIDS Trust), Deborah Gold, Chief Executive
National Commission on Forced Marriage, Nasreen Rehman, Vice Chair
National Union of Journalists, Michelle Stanistreet, General Secretary
Newbury Weekly News, Andy Murrill, Group Editor
News Media Association, Santha Rasaiah, Legal, Policy and Regulatory Affairs Director
Newsquest, Toby Granville, Editorial Development Director; Peter John, Group Editor for Worcester/Stourbridge
Nursing Standard, Graham Scott, Editor
NWN Media, Barrie Phillips-Jones, Editorial Director
Odysseus Trust, Lord Lester of Herne Hill QC, Director
Open Data Manchester, Julian Tait, Co-Founder
Open Knowledge, Jonathan Gray, Director of Policy and Research
Open Rights Group, Jim Killock, Executive Director
OpenCorporates, Chris Taggart, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Oxford Mail and The Oxford Times, Simon O’Neill, Group Editor
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals Foundation, Dr Julia Baines, Science Policy Advisor
Press Association, Pete Clifton, Editor in Chief; Jonathan Grun, Emeritus Editor
Press Gazette, Dominic Ponsford, Editor
Prisoners’ Advice Service, Lubia Begum-Rob, Joint Managing Solicitor
Privacy International, Gus Hosein, Executive Director
Private Eye, Ian Hislop, Editor
Public Concern at Work, Cathy James, Chief Executive
Public Interest Research Centre, Richard Hawkins, Director
Public Law Project, Jo Hickman, Director
Pulse, Nigel Praities, Editor
Race on the Agenda, Andy Gregg, Chief Executive
Renewable Energy Foundation, Dr John Constable, Director
Reprieve, Clare Algar, Executive Director
Republic, Graham Smith, Chief Executive Officer
Request Initiative CIC, Brendan Montague, Founder and Director
Rights Watch (UK), Yasmine Ahmed, Director
RoadPeace, Beccie D’Cunha, Chief Executive Officer
Salmon and Trout Conservation (UK), Guy Linley-Adams, Solicitor
Sheila McKechnie Foundation, Linda Butcher, Chief Executive
Society of Editors, Bob Satchwell, Executive Director
South Northants Action Group, Andrew Bodman, Secretary
South Wales Argus, Kevin Ward, Editor
Southern Daily Echo, Ian Murray, Editor in Chief
Southport Visitor, Andrew Brown, Editor
Spinwatch, David Miller, Director
Stop HS2, Joe Rukin, Campaign Manager
Sunday Life, Martin Breen, Editor
TaxPayers’ Alliance, Jonathan Isaby, Chief Executive
Telegraph Media Group, Chris Evans, Editor and Director of Content
The Corner House, Nick Hildyard, Founder and Director
The Independent, Amol Rajan, Editor
The Independent on Sunday, Lisa Markwell, Editor
The Irish News, Noel Doran, Editor
The Mail on Sunday, Geordie Greig, Editor
The Sun, Tony Gallagher, Editor; Stig Abell, Managing Editor
The Sunday Post, Donald Martin, Editor
The Sunday Times, Martin Ivens, Editor
The Times, John Witherow, Editor
Transform Justice, Penelope Gibbs, Director
Transparency International UK, Robert Barrington, Executive Director
Trinity Mirror, Simon Fox, Chief Executive; Lloyd Embley, Group Editor in Chief; Neil Benson, Editorial Director Regionals Division
Trust for London, Bharat Mehta, Chief Executive
UNISON, Dave Prentis, General Secretary
Unite the Union, Len McCluskey, General Secretary
Unlock Democracy, Alexandra Runswick, Director
War on Want, Vicki Hird, Director of Policy and Campaigns
We Own It, Cat Hobbs, Director
Welfare Weekly, Stephen Preece, Editor
WhatDoTheyKnow, Volunteer Administration Team
Women’s Resource Centre, Vivienne Hayes, Chief Executive Officer
WWF-UK, Debbie Tripley, Senior Legal Adviser
Zacchaeus 2000 Trust, Joanna Kennedy, Chief Executive
38 Degrees, Blanche Jones, Campaign Director
4in10 Campaign, Ade Sofola, Strategic Manager
1 www.gov.uk/government/speeches/freedom-of-information-new-commission
2 The Rt Hon Jack Straw MP, oral evidence before Justice Committee, Post-Legislative Scrutiny of the Freedom of Information Act, 17 April 2012, Q.344. www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmjust/96/120417.htm
3 BBC Radio 4, Today programme, 14 May 2015. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/14/court-exceeded-its-power-in-ordering-publication-of-charles-memos-straw. The Supreme Court’s ruling related to the use of the veto to block the release of Prince Charles’ correspondence with ministers in response to a request by the Guardian newspaper
4 Oral evidence to Justice Committee, 17 April 2012, Q.355 & Q.363. www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmjust/96/120417.htm
5 House of Commons, oral questions, 23.6.15, col. 754, www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmhansrd/cm150623/debtext/150623‐0001.htm#15062354000032
6 Ofcom, February 2012, Written evidence to the Justice Committee, Post-legislative Scrutiny of the Freedom of Information Act, Volume 3, Ev w176-177. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmjust/96/96vw77.htm
7 The Government response to consultationon enhanced fees for divorce proceedings, possession claims, and general applications in civil proceedings and Consultation on further fees proposals
23 Sep 15 | Magazine, mobile, Volume 44.03 Autumn 2015
Today the bulk of the media in the Balkans has “been bought by people with no history in, or understanding of, the media business; they promote narrow interests of their owners or new political elites; sometimes without even pretence of objectivity,” said Kemal Kurspahic, former editor of Oslobodjenje, an independent newspaper published during the Bosnian war, reflecting on the development of media freedom over the past 25 years.
While in the 1990s nationalism was the order of the day, today a whole host of challenges – including murky media ownership – face independent journalists across the region. The Balkan Investigative Journalism Network in Serbia, for instance, has documented the campaign against them from authorities and pro-government press on a dedicated website, BIRN Under Fire. Television journalist Jet Xharra and BIRN Kosovo took the government to court over the right to report on the prime minister’s accounts, and to set a legal precedent for press freedom in the state. But Xharra, country director of BIRN in Kosovo, said there is a sense of disbelief among those who had to report during war, that these kinds of battles still need to be fought.
“We cannot understand why, 20 years later, you have to deal with [such] a strain on your reporting,” said Xharra.
During the war years that tore Yugoslavia apart, press freedom, like pretty much every other aspect of society, experienced a profound crisis. Large swathes of the media in the former republics became propaganda tools for ruling elites, even before the fighting started. In fact, concerted media campaigns of hate and fear-mongering played an important part in priming people who had lived side by side for decades for war. As British historian Mark Thompson put it in his 1999 book Forging War, on the media’s role in the conflicts in Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia: “War is the continuation of television news by other means.”
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Dangers of reporting in the Balkins
Attacks on journalists and journalism in the Balkans, compiled from Index’s Mapping Media Freedom project
SERBIA
Independent online news outlet Peščcanik has been targeted on several occasions after reporting in June 2014 that a senior minister had plagiarised parts of his doctoral dissertation. The site has faced distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, and hackers have altered text and blocked IP addresses, thus preventing readers from accessing content.
MONTENEGRO
In May 2015, after reporting on corruption in local government, journalist Milovan Novovic’s car was vandalised. In June, journalist Alma Ljuca’s car was attacked in a similar way. This comes after a car belonging to the daily Vijesti was torched in early 2014.
BOSNIA
In December 2014, police raided the Sarajevo offices of news site Klix.ba, looking for a recording in which the prime minister of the country’s Republika Srpska entity spoke about “buying off” politicians. This came after the site’s director and a journalist were interrogated and asked to reveal their source for the recording, which they refused to do.
CROATIA
In May 2015, journalist and blogger Željko Peratović was attacked by three men outside his home, and hospitalised with head injuries. Peratović is known for his investigative reporting, and has covered the trial of two agents of the former Yugoslav Security Agency.
MACEDONIA
Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Vladimir Peshevski was filmed physically assaulting Sashe Ivanovski, a journalist and owner of the news site Maktel, who has been critical of the government.
SLOVENIA
In March 2015 photojournalist Jani Bozic received a suspended prison sentence for publishing a photo of Alenka Bratusek, then prime minster elect, which showed him receiving a congratulatory text message from a prominent businessman 20 minutes before results were announced.
KOSOVO
Express journalist Visar Duriqi, who has covered radical Islamists in Kosovo, has received a number of death threats, including threats of beheading.
Index on Censorship’s Mapping Media Freedom project launched as in 2014 to record threats to media freedom throughout the European Union and EU candidate countries. It has recently expanded to cover Russia and Ukraine. |
Yet during the Balkan wars beginning in the 1990s there were local journalists who, in the face of enormous pressure, rejected nationalist and propagandist lines, and attempted to sift truth from lies and distortion. Beyond the daily struggle that came with just existing in a war zone, independent journalism was dangerous work. As Human Rights Watch points out in a new report on the state of media freedom in the Balkans, journalists who were, at the time, “critical of official government positions were often labelled as traitors or spies working on behalf of foreign interests and against the state”.
Serbia’s B92, a rare dissenting voice in a media landscape shaped by President Slobodan Milosevic’s propaganda strategy, is perhaps the most famous example of independent journalism. Set up in 1989 as a youth-focused radio station (later branching out into TV and web platforms), B92 bravely covered a turbulent time – from the war in Bosnia, to the Nato bombing of Serbia, to the protest movement that eventually saw Milošević ousted. For this, it was continuously hounded by the government. At one point in 1999 authorities commandeered its offices and radio frequency, forcing the station off air, before it could resume broadcasting from a different studio and frequency, under the name B2-92.
In Croatia, President Franjo Tudjman also made sure ultra-nationalism had a place in column inches and on airwaves. Feral Tribune, which started out in 1983 as a satirical supplement in the newspaper Slobodna Dalmacija, had other ideas. Under sustained pressure from the authorities, it covered stories of human rights and conflict that many other outlets avoided, in addition to its biting satire. It was taken to court, publicly burned, and one journalist was even drafted into the army after Feral published an edited photo of Tudjman and Milosevic in bed together on the front page.
Bosnia was the country in the region that would be by far the hardest hit by fighting. But even as war came to Sarajevo, independent journalism survived in some small way. Oslobodjenje, which started out as an anti-Nazi paper in 1943, had a track record of editorial independence. In 1988, staff for the first time voted for their own editor – Kemal Kurspahic – instead of accepting one appointed by the authorities. Just three years later they fought for their freedom again, this time in the constitutional court, as the newly elected nationalist parties agreed to adopt a law whereby they could appoint the editors and managers of Bosnian media. In 1992 came their toughest challenge yet. With the two towers of their office building under fire – in one night they lost six floors on one side and four on the other – they decided to go underground, and continue their work from a nuclear bomb shelter, with no newsprint supplies and no phone links.
“If dozens of foreign journalists could come to report on the siege of Sarajevo and Bosnian war, how could we – whose families, city and country were under attack – stop doing our job?” Kurspahic, now managing editor of Connection Newspapers, told Index. They felt an obligation to their readers: “We could not leave them without news at the worst time of their lives.”
Oslobodjenje even celebrated its 50th anniversary during the war, with 82 papers around the world printing some of their stories. With that they achieved “the ultimate victory”, Kurspahic said, “if the aim of the terror against Oslobodjenje was to silence us as a voice of multiethnic Bosnia”.
“People were getting killed, so we were reporting it. The risk was physical at that time to journalists,” Xharra told Index. Today she hosts Kosovo’s most watched current affairs programme, as well as fulfilling her role at BIRN Kosovo. But she cut her reporting teeth as a translator, fixer and field producer for UK broadcasters – the BBC and Channel 4 – during the Kosovo war. She recalled going through frontlines for a story, and hiding tapes from paramilitary checkpoints, painting a vivid picture of a time when practicing journalism in the western Balkans meant near constant risk of physical harm.
Journalists could be caught in crossfire, or targeted specifically for their work. Kurspahic remembers the Oslobodjenje reporter Kjasif Smajlovic in Zvornik, who sent his wife and children away, and stayed to report on the fall of the town until he was killed by Serbian paramilitary forces in April 1992. In 1999, Slavko Curuvija, known for his critical reporting, was shot 17 times in a Belgrade side street, just days after a pro-government daily had labelled him a Nato supporter. In many cases, there has been little to no accountability for such crimes, breeding a culture of impunity that still hangs over the region.
Because while the darkest days for press freedom in the Balkans came during wartime, peace has not brought the improved conditions many hoped for. At a talk in March, Dunja Mijatovic, the OSCE’s free expression representative, went as far as to say that the situation now is worse than in the aftermath of the conflicts.
And today the media itself remains part of the problem, especially when journalists turn on their colleagues. One prominent example is the story of BIRN Serbia. Following their critical investigation into a state-owned power company, Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic labelled the group liars who had been funded by the EU to speak against his government. That attack was then taken forward by the pro-government Serbian press, including in the newspaper Informer. Just one example where the media has been a less than staunch defender of its own rights.
Data from Index’s Mapping Media Freedom project, which tracks media freedom across Europe, indicates that worries of threats to media rights are justified. In just over a year it has received more than 170 reports of violations from the countries of the former Yugoslavia. Incidents included a Croatian journalist who received a letter saying she would “end up like Curuvija”; a Bosnian journalist threatened over Facebook by a local politician; Kosovan journalists depicted as animals on several billboards; a Montenegrin daily that had a company car torched; a Macedonian editor who had a funeral wreath sent to his home; and a Slovenian who faced charges for reporting on the intelligence agency. Online and offline, physical and verbal, serious threats to press freedom remain, some 20 years on.
© Milana Knezevic
This article is part of the autumn issue of Index on Censorship magazine looking at comparisons between old censors and new censors. Copies can be purchased from Amazon, in some bookshops and online, more information here.
23 Sep 15 | Africa, Angola, mobile, News and features
Four of the jailed Angolan activists in the case that has dragged on since June. Photograph: Ekuva Estrela
Over the past month, the Angolan government has continued its crackdown on freedom of expression and the right to assemble in the country.
Most recently, on 14 September, human rights activist José Marcos Mavungo received a six year jail sentence for attempting to hold a peaceful protest on 14 March. Even though the demonstration was banned, a judge of the provincial court of Cabinda charging him with rebellion.
Mavungo is a former member of “Mpalabanda”, a group that was banned after it highlighted rights abuses by security forces in the province.
Concerns have been raised that the activist’s sentencing represents a serious abuse of the Angolan justice system. “It did not meet basic due process guarantees and formal trial standards required by Angolan law,” wrote 2015 Index journalism award winner Rafael Marques de Morais, Angolan activist and founder of anti-corruption website, Maka Angola. “The judge, Jeremias Sofrera, ignored the blatant lack of evidence exposed during the trial and all allegations and complaints presented by the defense lawyers.”
Mavungo’s legal counsel said they will appeal his sentencing.
Marques has repeatedly been targeted by Angolan authorities for his investigative journalism. He was briefly detained and had his passport confiscated by immigration officers on 10 September while returning from a trip to South Africa. Marques wrote that he was given contradicting explanations as to why he was being held. It was unclear whether a new order had been issued or an old one banning him from leaving Angola was still in force. Ultimately his passport was returned and he was released.
The incident did not deter the Marques, who only a few days later helped to organise a meeting in solidarity with political prisoners, which was attended by more than a thousand people. The event was broadcast live by the radio station and streamed through various social networks for nearly four hours.
The mother of 19-year old political prisoner Nito Alves, Adalia Chivonde, told the gathering that her son was being subjected to psychological torture and isolation. “We are asking the President and General Ze Maria [Chief of the Military Intelligence and Security] to free our sons,” she said.
One of the most well-known recent cases is that of 15 men imprisoned since June on charges of civil disobedience and planning to overthrow the government. The men, who were part of a study group, had been organising peaceful demonstrations against President José Eduardo dos Santos since March 2011. On 28 August, the families of the prisoners staged a march in support their loved ones despite a banning order issued by the local governor.
The families have repeatedly attempted to hold public demonstrations to bring attention to their relatives’ situation, but have been thwarted by bureaucratic obstacles. The family members have responded by submitting petitions and modifying their plans to meet the official objections.
The protest was supposed to take place at 3pm on Friday 28 August at Praca da Independencia (Independence Square) in Luanda. However, as the protest coincided with the 73rd birthday celebrations of President dos Santos, the streets were not only filled with music, dancing and craft fairs, but also secret police agents and the presidential guard, with RPG-7s and AK47s in tow.
“We are not going to sit and wait for our sons. We really are going to march. It is our right,” stated Adália Chivonde, the mother of prisoner Manuel Nito Alves, in the days running up to the demonstration.
“We will not be able to hold the demonstration because, as you can see, [they] have already invaded all the space,” said Elsa Caolo, sister of Osvaldo Caolo, one of the jailed men. “We can not even walk in peace — we are to be chased down the street […] we can’t speak out.”
